


a song too hard to follow

by orphan_account



Category: Frühlings Erwachen | Spring Awakening - Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon - Play & Musical Combination, Canon Era, Friendship, Gen, Living Together, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sexual Assault, Spoilers, Suicide Attempt, god idk what else to tag. i just love this show sm, update: changed the title cuz i realized it was dumb
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 15:10:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15910782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In which Melchior dies at the end of Act I, and not Moritz.





	1. what cannot be told

**Author's Note:**

> BIG sexual assault warning for this first chapter because......hayloft scene.......

“Oh, Melchi -- I don’t know.”

The two of them sat cradled together in the hayloft, no sound but the storm raging outside and the gentle rustling of hay whenever one would shift. Wendla felt the uncertainty in her voice reflected tenfold as she spoke aloud, breaking the silence. Melchior lay against her, his head resting gently against her chest, breathing slowly in and out as if he were asleep. It was something good, and nice; the hay was warm, they were out of the storm, and they were so close to one another. Friends again, like when they were kids. But what Melchior had tried to do, only a few moments earlier…

“Wendla,” he muttered, and his voice seemed lower and rougher than its usual tone. “I can hear your heart beating.”

“Me too,” Wendla replied, and Melchior sighed almost dreamily. She felt almost bad about it, knowing he thought she meant she could hear his heart. In truth, she could hear her  _ own _ just about as well as he could, an anxious thumping deep in her inner ear. He was going to try it again. She could tell by the way the air around the two of them seemed to change, the way her lungs seemed to squeeze in on themselves. Surely enough, he lifted his head once more and pressed his lips to hers in a soft motion.

_ My first kiss! _

Wendla did not flinch away this time as she had before, when he had come towards her in a similar manner. She couldn’t exactly put a finger on why. Partially, she supposed, it was to get it over with. It was obvious what he wanted to do, and she’d rather let him do it then start any sort of argument. Even if kissing meant people were in love...it was fine, right? They were friends, or, at least, Wendla wanted to think so. It was okay to love your friends. And even if anyone thought they were more than that, she didn’t really mind. She was also full of an odd curiosity: Why did he want to kiss her? What did it mean? And what did kissing feel like, anyway? So far, a little lackluster: intimate, but heavy and wet, and a little gross.

Melchior moved forward, pressing against Wendla, and the unexpected force of it pushed her onto her back on the hay below the two of them. That scared her; it seemed like more than kissing, now, but  _ what _ more she had no idea. She’d never seen Ina and her husband do something like that before, that was certain. “No---Wait---No---” she muttered, muffled by Melchior’s lips on hers. 

“Wendla!” Melchior repeated her name, shifting to press his hips against hers. Wendla felt an odd pressure on her upper thigh, like Melchior had something in his pocket.

“Wait---Stop!” Wendla insisted, pushing up on Melchior’s chest and growing a bit panicked. He finally let up, pulling away from Wendla with a flushed face. “I can’t. I don’t think we’re supposed to---” She began, but found herself at a loss.  _ Supposed to what, exactly? _ She had no idea what was happening, but she knew it was more than kissing, and that it didn’t feel very good. 

“Not supposed to what?  _ Love _ ?” Melchior asked almost pleadingly, and it made Wendla feel icky the way he said it. Was this love? Was Melchior in love with her? The thought made her feel more than a little flattered, but uncomfortable at the same time. She had to let him down easy before he got the wrong idea...but was it even the wrong idea? She didn’t know. She had no clue how exactly she felt about him. Her head was spinning, her heart was pounding, and Melchior was unbuttoning her dress.

“Oh, no, Melchi, please don’t do that,” she whispered. Her arms seemed heavy, pinned at her sides. “It’s---”

“What? Sinful?” Melchior scoffed, running one hand up under her skirt and onto the bare skin of her thigh. The touch made Wendla shiver. 

“No. I don’t know!” Wendla whimpered. Melchior had pulled the front of her dress down by this point, exposing her breasts to the warm air of the hayloft. The storm outside seemed suddenly much louder. She moved to cover herself, embarrassed, put Melchior’s hands were already on her, considerate but firm. “Melchior, I’m serious! My father---” she began again, before Melchior cut her off with another frightening kiss. This was something Wendla knew was wrong; ever since she was a child her father had strictly scolded her if she ever wore her underwear around the house, especially if there were boys around. If she wasn’t even allowed to do  _ that _ , in no way would this fly. And if her father heard a noise from the hayloft, and came out to investigate...things could go badly. “Please stop. I’m scared.”

“Why? Because it’s good?” Melchior insisted, but it didn’t  _ feel  _ good, even though he had yanked her drawers down to her ankles and moved the hand on her thigh  _ there _ between her legs and whatever he was doing was sending uncomfortable, compulsive shocks of feeling down her spine. It felt like his touch was everywhere, even inside of her, though she knew it couldn’t be possible. “Because it makes us feel something?”

“Melchior, you don’t---I don’t know what you’re doing. Please stop.”

“Do you trust me, Wendla?”

“Yes, but---”

And then he really  _ was _ inside of her, through some combination of pushing her legs apart at the thighs and pushing down his knickerbockers in a confident, sudden motion. She closed her eyes, and a thought from deep inside of her ripped its way out, feeling foreign and upsetting

_ (MY BODY IS NOT WHOLE!!!! THERE IS A HOLE IN MY BODY!!!) _

and Wendla screamed, because she didn’t know what else to do. She screamed from the pain, a burning friction discomfort that shot straight up her spine and into her tear ducts. But she screamed from something else, too; a wide existential fear, too big for her body. The universe seemed to unveil itself to her all at once, and it was empty and cold, whistling with a roaring wind inside of her skull. Then she was floating above herself, bumping her head painlessly on the roof of the hayloft, staring seven feet down at her empty little body all numb.

What happened next happened in a silent triptych.

First, Melchior and herself, looking as if she’d taken the Lovers card out of Ina’s tarot deck and folded it in half. He covered her like a blanket, his lips at her neck, in love. Was it love? Wendla didn’t think so. She didn’t think he understood, even though he seemed to understand everything --- the quality that had drawn her to him, and, she supposed, that had drawn her into this situation. Or maybe he was the  _ only _ person who understood; that this  _ was _ love, but Wendla had been lied to, and love was really something terrible and frightening, and it hurt. It wasn’t something you fell into, something you had for someone -- it was something that was done to you. Underneath the snowfall of his white shirt and pale skin, she seemed much smaller than she thought she was. All she could see were her arms, limp at her sides, and the peaks of her knees up and out of the bottom of her fairy-queen dress. And her eyes: wide open now, not looking at him, or at herself hovering above, but instead up at the ceiling, as if she were trying to stare right through it. All numb.

Second, her father, of course, of course. What kind of father would he be, ignoring the sound of his daughter screaming in the night? Then the rush of wind as he swung the wooden door open, the first sight of the sky in what felt like a millenium --- the storm had ended. Melchior’s countenance crumbled, his trademark smugness blown away like eraser shavings on a desk. He was embarrassed, an expression Wendla had never seen on him until this point, and it fit his face poorly. Above all, Melchior was frightened, Wendla’s own fear seeming to transfer into him and render her the corpse-like husk she lay under him as. For he saw the exact thing Wendla saw next: the rifle. Her father held it in both hands, both drawing attention to it and almost casual about it too, shifting its weight from hand to hand as he and Melchior shared heated words Wendla couldn’t begin to hear. Of course, of course.

Third, a warning shot. A little intimidation. Stay away from my daughter this, you filthy pervert that. The kind of thing that would send him running with his tail between his legs and make him never come back again. Only it turned out to be one hell of a warning, because rather than sinking into the hay behind them, or lodging in Melchior’s shoulder, it took its path through the side of his neck. Blood spurt from the wound, comically red against the blues and yellows of the hayloft. All three primary colors. He fell off of and out of her, twitching and shuddering, growing paler. Incompatible with life, a phrase she’d heard someone say once without understanding it and that now was finally, horribly, applicable. Now it was not Wendla or Melchior who was afraid. It was her father. He dropped the rifle like it had burned him and fled the hayloft, stumbling into the night with his hands on his head, in anguish.

Wendla screamed and screamed, though she could not hear it, and she kept screaming until morning came.


	2. i'm not sad

Moritz woke up, and his first thought was  _ wait a second, wasn’t I supposed to be dead by now? _

He was not dead, however; the sunlight streaming into his sleep-stuck eyes and the weight of a well-worn blanket over his aching muscles confirmed that. He lay in a bed bigger than any he had ever seen before, big enough for four or five people, but he lay alone. No one was there.

_ Where the hell am I? _

It took a long moment to retrieve that memory. What finally cinched it was when Moritz rolled onto his back, wincing as he heard the joints crack. He found himself staring up at his own face, hovering a few feet above him, suspended in eerie black nothingness. It freaked him out a little, crying out, before he realized it was simply an enormous black mirror set into the ceiling, surrounded by an ornate frame. He stared at it once more, no longer with fear, but with awe.

_ … _

_ … _

_ … _

_ Ilse! _

He was at Ilse’s house --- well, the house Ilse was living in. He could not remember every detail of the fantastical stories she’d told him last, but he remembered the mirror, and he was certain he would remember it for the rest of his life. Which was looking to be at least a little longer than he intended it to, seeing as he was here. He had planned to take his own life --- nothing he planned seemed to be going his way nowadays. Meeting Ilse in the woods took him off track, distracted him; he wasn’t sure if he was glad about it or disappointed, but he was much too tired to try again. Not for a long while, at least. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise.

Moritz got out of bed, and his vision went black and dizzy, causing him to stumble slightly on the rough hardwood floor. When he could see again, he looked around the room he was in, trying to get a grasp on his surroundings. First things first, he was wearing a girl’s nightgown, all frills and lace and a little too small for him. It must have been one of Ilse’s. He would have taken it off, a little embarrassed, but he was nude underneath, which would have been a much,  _ much _ worse way to be potentially caught. Most of the room was taken up by the enormous bed, but in the free space there were half-finished paintings, brushes, mahl sticks, and other assorted bric-a-brac of artistry. Moritz wondered whether they were Ilse’s work, or that of the house’s previous owner...some man named Lenz. All Moritz knew about him was that he was bad news, according to Ilse, and the thought that this was once that man’s sleeping quarters unnerved him. 

Where was Ilse, anyway? Moritz looked around the room with a new purpose, growing ever so slightly nervous. He didn’t want to be alone. Not now. Not in this room, with the memory of Lenz hanging in it.

_ “Goodnight, Ilse, when you are asleep you will be pretty enough to murder!” _

_ That happened here. In this room. He could have killed her. Would have, even. _

He felt like a little kid afraid of a ghost again, but he didn’t have the energy to feel ashamed of himself for it. “Ilse?” He called out into the silent morning air of the bedroom, the same tone of voice he used to call for his mother. His mother, who surely hated him, who would never want to see him again, who he was dead to...his chest tightened with dread, tears threatening at his eyes. He remembered what had driven him here, to the forest in the first place, rushing over his brain in waves of anxiety and fear.

“Moritz?”

He let out a sigh as he heard Ilse’s voice from another room, and with it he seemed to release those negative emotions into the atmosphere, where they dissipated and could not harm him anymore. Ilse, his savior, walked into the room holding a mug between both of her hands as though it were a frog or toad. She was wearing the shirt she’d found him in, the buttons undone to reveal the space between her breasts, tucked tightly into his black school shorts. The oddness of their outfit change brought a naughty question to Moritz’s mind:  _ Did we…? _ But he quickly pushed the suggestion out of his mind. He was a little unsure of it, but he felt like the universe couldn’t possibly be so cruel as to wipe  _ that _ completely from his memory. 

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” she teased, walking over to Moritz and giving him a quick hug (made slightly uncomfortable with their mutual state of near-nudity). “Good afternoon, more like it. You really were tired, huh?”

“Guess so.” Moritz scratched the back of his head sheepishly, grinning at Ilse. Even now, having spent the night with her, he had no clue how much she knew about why he’d been out in the forest in the first place, and now that he wasn’t dead he didn’t much feel like telling her. Better to let the event fade into nothingness, a brief lapse in judgement that wouldn’t affect things. It would make things easier for everyone else. “What time is it, anyway?”

Ilse shot a quick look to the clock on the bedroom wall, an elaborate, kitschy thing that was almost certainly handmade. “A little after four,” she finally answered him. “Oh, and it’s Sunday. You slept through all of yesterday.” 

“Oh.” That would explain why his body felt so stiff, Moritz supposed. “Sorry.”

“It’s no worry,” Ilse reassured him, leaning back slightly against the wall and taking a sip of whatever was in her mug. “It was actually so funny. Padinsky was all excited to meet you because she wanted to curl your hair and take pictures, but you fell right asleep the second everyone came over.”

Something about the anecdote seemed familiar: stumbling into Ilse’s home, hollowed out and dry, regretting the decision but glad he made it at the same time. Then the influx of new faces, excitable girls and gaunt, introspective boys, all wanting to see him and know him. Then sleep, the newness of it all too much. Moritz felt a little more stable on his feet with this timeline of the last day -- er, days. It was something out of the way, allowing his brain to hone in on higher states of thought. Next on the agenda: the fact that his stomach was growling loud enough for Ilse to hear it, and she was laughing like a boy and nearly spilling her drink. “Come into the kitchen, I’ll cook something up for you.”

Cook something up Ilse  _ certainly _ did: the thickest stew Moritz had ever seen, filled to the brim with a whole variety of meats and potatoes, served with what seemed to be homemade rye bread. “Nohl came over and made this yesterday while you were still asleep,” Ilse said as she set the loaf down, tearing an uneven piece off of it and precariously holding it in one hand with her bowl of stew in the other. “He’s taking a break from music to try out some other stuff. Said he’d lost his flame. I honestly think he should stick with what he’s got going with this baking thing, because  _ God _ is this tasty bread!”

Moritz giggled, taking a generous spoonful of his stew. Being with Ilse was good for him, he figured, with her sunny disposition and always-running mouth. There were silent moments between them, unable to speak between spoonfuls of stew and mouthfuls of bread, but it was never awkward; they simply relished the silence between the two of them. Every so often Ilse would look at him over the rim of her bowl, eyes wide and eyebrows raised, and Moritz would snort in an ugly laugh and try to stop himself from spitting soup all over the table.

It was a while before Ilse spoke again, the soup and bread long gone, and when she spoke it was in a soft tone that seemed procured from elsewhere: “Thanks for not killing yourself, Moritz.”

“Huh?” Moritz replied, a strangled neutral response.It was stupid, he realized in hindsight, to assume she didn’t have a clue about why he’d ben wandering about so morosely in the woods with his head in his hands, but he was still taken by surprise. He fleetingly considered the possibility of lying, telling Ilse he had no idea what she was talking about. It wouldn’t have done anything useful, except make him feel even more pathetic.

“I saw the pistol you had in your bag while you were asleep,” Ilse admitted, seeming uncharacteristically shy. “And even besides that, I could sort of...feel it, I suppose. Something about your posture. The look in your eyes too, maybe. That’s sort of why I wanted you to come over so bad. I thought that even if I couldn’t change your mind completely, I could...postpone it a little. I don’t know. Maybe it was dumb.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Moritz cut in. “I’m okay now.” Ilse did not make any sort of reaction to this, simply looking at him across the table with a terrifying sort of tenderness in her eyes. “Well. I don’t know. But I don’t feel bad.”

Ilse didn’t answer in words, but instead grinned at him from across the table. She was missing a tooth, a dark gap in the otherwise complete row of teeth along the bottom of her mouth, and he hadn’t noticed before. Now Moritz couldn’t seem to look away from it. It was different from how she had looked the last time he’d seen her, years ago when they went to school as kids, but everything was different when he used that a reference. Her hair, once long and now short and scruffy, her clothes, once pristine and now dirty and patch ridden...the bruises on her arms, the cuts on her legs, and the space between her teeth that felt like an unmarked grave. If these things had been there, he had not noticed them. He wondered, fleetingly, how many things there were about her that he had not noticed before, and how many things he would never notice. 

“I think it’s a good job for me,” Ilse finally spoke, though Moritz was unsure if she was addressing him. “Preventing death. It seems like something I could do. God knows I need something to do with my life---”

“Do you think Lenz is going to come back?”

Ilse blinked, confused, and Moritz regretted asking. The question had been burning in his head since he woke up, a shallow fear following him like his own shadow. It felt like the time to reveal something, hearing Ilse talk so plainly about how she felt. He’d always had less tact than her, even as kids.

“Is that something you’re worried about?” Ilse responded, a non-answer. She seemed to recognize it, though, and cleared her throat before continuing. “I doubt it. He talked a lot of talk, but he was a real coward. I got too rowdy for him. He was scared of me in the end, not the other way around like he wanted. That’s why he ran out. Besides, if he ever comes back here…” She got up from the table and opened one of the kitchen drawers, pulling out an elaborately engraved revolver. She held it hesitantly, as though she were afraid of it, though the look on her face said otherwise. “...He just so happened to leave something important behind. I’ll give him a taste of his own medicine. Show him what it’s like to wake up with a gun to your chest, why don’t I.”

Ilse laughed heartily, and it was this, and this alone, that put Moritz back at ease. They laughed together for a good moment before a knock at the heavy wooden door cut the sound off. Ilse looked in its direction, tucking the gun in the back pocket of the shorts she wore as she walked forwards. She made incomprehensible small talk in some Bavarian dialect with whoever it was, then walked back inside with her hands full of envelopes. “Just the mailman,” Ilse explained, opening letters and skimming their contents as she tossed the empty envelopes to the ground. “He’s from up North, so I’m teaching him standard German in return for him delivering all the way out here. He’s really an interesting g---” Ilse stopped suddenly in her skimming, holding the letter closer to her face and reading it more carefully. “Oh, shit.”

“What is it?” Moritz asked, his heartbeat already gearing up for a panic.

“Melchior’s dead.”


End file.
